Invite your friends to this event and remember to spread the word.

All are welcome to just come along but it is easiest for us if you email us so that we have an idea of numbers. See Find Us to locate the venue. Parking is free after 18:00.

This runs over four Wednesdays (18th Oct, 25th Oct, 1st Nov and 8th Nov) Each evening is scheduled to finish at 21:45.

Remember, as it says on the About Us page:

… You do not have to read music, nor is there a formal audition. Each section (tenor, lead, baritone and bass) has a leader who will help as necessary and MP3 files are available for each song.

At the end of the evening some of us may be found at the Seacourt Bridge.

The music has now been chosen!

• ‘Crazy Little Thing called Love’ by Freddie Mercury
• ‘And So It Goes’ by Billy Joel.

The coaches will be:

Colin Danskin

Colin is a freelance choir leader, singer and teacher. He currently directs Oxford Harmony and Oxford Boys’ Choir as well as running singing workshops in prisons for Sing Inside. He is currently a Voces8 Scholar and performs in both Oxford and London as both a concert and soloist.  Last year he was tenor Lay Clerk at Magdalen College and a choral scholar with Oxford Bach Soloists. Before that he sang at The Queen’s College whilst directing jazz a cappella group The Oxford Gargoyles, including a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Colin spent five enjoyable years as a secondary music teacher, and continues to teach both privately and for the choristers of St Barnabas, Jericho.   

Ellie Stamp

Ellie is a 23-year-old mezzo-soprano currently based in Oxford. She has spent the past year singing as the first female Lay Clerk with the Choir of New College, Oxford, and has enjoyed exploring consort, solo and operatic repertoire alongside this, including performing with a jazz a cappella group The Oxford Gargoyles at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She was a Sing for Pleasure Young Conducting Scholar 2022-23 and is an Ex Cathedral graduate scholar 2023-24.

During her gap year Ellie participated in the 2018-19 Genesis Sixteen programme before studying Music at the University of York, from which she graduated with the John Paynter Prize in 2022, and performed with a capella group Vox. Since graduating, Ellie has performed in a number of productions across a range of music and opera festivals and was most recently a James Bowman Young Artist at the 2023 Vache Baroque Festival.

John Carter

John started singing as a boy chorister, eventually graduating to bass in a county youth choir. Along the way he learnt about harmony with the aid of a battered acoustic guitar and discovered the joy of a cappella with friends and popular songs of the day.  Let’s skip over his band years – playing bass and singing the high harmonies – and fast forward 15 years when John stumbled across barbershop and immediately fell in love – again – with close harmony. Very soon he sang in several quartets and helped to start the first Oxfordshire barbershop chorus. Another 40 years have passed and he still sings with the chorus which migrated closer to Oxford city in 2007, becoming Oxford Harmony and singing a wider range of a cappella genres. John also currently sings the high notes with a five-man group and as bass in two mixed groups. While pursuing a career in computing, he has sung with his various groups in many parts of Europe and the States.

Matt Pope

Matt is a singer and composer currently employed as a tenor Lay Clerk at Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford. He has just finished his second year singing with the acclaimed jazz a cappella group, The Oxford Gargoyles, with whom he performed at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He is a member of the Fount & Origin chamber choir, and features on their latest disc, awarded five stars by Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. Recently, he has undertaken more solo work, travelling to Manchester to sing with the rising chamber choir, Kantos, taking on arias in Bach’s John Passion, and performing with New Chamber Opera in Oxford. He has also written for Kantos, who commissioned his arrangement of ‘The Trees They Do Grow High’, the recording of which is soon to be released. 

Will Prior

Will is an accomplished countertenor and our previous music director. He graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford in 2021 with a degree in Music and spent his first year out of university teaching at Magdalen College School. He has since completed a year singing as a Lay Clerk at Christ Church Cathedral alongside being a Voces8 Scholar.

Will has always loved singing in a variety of styles from solo art song, opera and oratorio to consort and close harmony; in his final year of studies he particularly enjoyed co-directing The Oxford Gargoyles, a vocal jazz ensemble.